Native shola forest species could regenerate under exotic tree plantations, found a team of scientists that investigated the possibility of restoring shola forests under abandoned exotic tree plantations in the…
The past two decades have seen an increase in environmental activism in the Nilgiris, as well as other parts of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. It has evolved from protests, dharnas…
In 2019, black wattle trees stood tall in around 50 hectares of land in Pazhathottam in Kerala’s Pambadum Shola National Park. Black wattle, in India, is an exotic, invasive tree…
A tree-planting frenzy has taken over many countries to counter climate change. In July 2019, Ethiopia announced that they planted more than 350 million trees in one day. A month…
If it's bright-hued birds you prefer watching, you'd barely look at a Nilgiri pipit twice. Moreover, the bird can be difficult to spot: the drab-coloured tones on its small, streaked…
Polker Kuttan, a 72-year-old Toda tribal from the Nilgiris, is like a local weather expert - he can predict the onset or delay of the seasonal rains and even the…
This week's stories rolled into one. To receive a weekly email with a roundup of our stories, please sign-up to our newsletter. Punjab farmers’ widows respond to apathy by standing…
Standing in the middle of a grassy hill, Thorthey Gooden looked around. The grass was short, just an inch long – like a lawn drying out in the summer. In…
In many ways, the Western Ghats is a study in contrast. While the foothills and slopes of the mountain range are covered in dense rainforest, the higher reaches are a…
Starting late July, the Anamalai hills near Munnar in Kerala will be resplendent, clad in a purplish blue carpet. The famed neelakurinji (Strobilanthes kunthiana) will burst into flower – a…
In 1987, Asad Rahmani, ornithologist and the former director of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), wrote in the journal Oryx that the greatest threat to the great Indian bustard…
In Idukki district in Kerala, inside the Munnar Wildlife Division is the Pampadum Shola National Park. Its undulating terrain, filled with the shola grasslands and temperate forests trees, forms the…
Summer is the pilot car that the monsoon follows into the Indian peninsula from the Indian Ocean. Thus, Kerala, which is at the entry point for the southwest monsoon, is…
Almost smack in the centre of the Palani hill range that forms the eastern spur of the Western Ghats, lies the hill station of Kodaikanal. This once sleepy idyllic getaway…
Naturalists in India have rediscovered a rare flowering plant — Arisaema translucens — after nearly 80 years. Botanist Edward Barnes first collected this plant in 1932 from the Nilgiri mountains in southern India. The plant,…
